Globally, there are some 700 cities, each with population exceeding 500,000 and are growing faster than the average growth rate of cities. This opens up the market for industry players to grow their business in new and emerging smart cities. The infrastructure investment for these cities is forecasted to be $30 trillion to $40 trillion, cumulatively, over the next 20 years.

With growing emphasis on reducing carbon emission and the fact that conventional cities form a major source of CO2 emission, planning a smart city becomes a viable option for governments and municipal authorities. Deploying technologies such as smart grids, smart metering for energy management; electric vehicle and traffic management with smart transportation and smart security are high growth areas within smart cities.

The overall smart cities market, valued at $526.3 billion in 2011, is forecasted to grow double fold to $1,023.4 billion by 2016, at a CAGR of 14.2% for the period 2011 to 2016. Among all application segments, we observe smart energy or energy management market to be the fastest growing market with an impressive CAGR of 28.7%, growing to $80.7 billion by 2016.

In addition to market sizes and forecasts, the report also provides a detailed analysis of the market trends and factors influencing market growth, offering in-depth geographic analyses of the smart cities market in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and ROW.

Along with the special coverage of 18 ongoing key smart cities project, the report also draws the competitive landscape of the smart cities market, providing an in-depth comparative analysis of the technological and marketing strategies that the key players are adopting in order to gain an edge over their competitors.